


an astronomer at my best

by antarcticas



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Constellations, Established Relationship, Eye Contact, F/M, Late Night Conversations, Metaphors, Stars, Zutara, katara and zuko loving each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25378765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antarcticas/pseuds/antarcticas
Summary: Zuko and Katara stay up all night and trace the stars together.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 89





	an astronomer at my best

**Author's Note:**

> S3 AU, probably at the Air Temple.

“You rise with the moon,” he teases, and she sighs in contentment and just buries her face further into his chest; practically for the heat that he emits, mostly because she just wants to feel close to him.

“And you with the sun. Funny, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” Zuko lays back and strokes her hair, staring up at the sky. “It’s so clear here.”

“Your Fire Nation and your ships and your factories . . . it all pollutes the air, you know? It makes it hard to see the stars. There’s none of that here.”

“It’s so dark and empty. It’s difficult to believe that this might go on forever.”

She raises her head up to look at the wondrous way he’s staring, then leans over and kisses the bottom of his scar. He doesn’t flinch so that’s a small victory. “We’re sort of small. I wonder if there are others out there.”

“Do you think we’ll ever know?”

He sounds like a small child and it warms her heart. “Maybe one day an Avatar will find out. Until then we mortals just have to have faith in the sky.”

“That’s scary too,” his lips twitch. “There are some things we will never know.”

“I don’t think so,” she shakes her head. “Whenever we go with the spirits, both of us, to the night sky or the sun, we  _ will  _ see everything. But we can’t tell now.”

He’s silent like he’s thinking. “Can you read the stars?”

She smirks. “When we were in the Si Wong Desert I used one to navigate. A star chart, that is. Do you know about Polaris?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s the North Star, I think right — right there. It always leads North.”

“So that’s how you tell direction?”

“It’s very useful when you don’t have a compass or any fancy technology. And it got us out of the desert.”

“Oh.”

“There are other constellations here too. Can you see the Dragon?”

“I don’t think so. All I see are a bunch of white dots.”

“Over there and there, that’s the head out of four, and then the trail just continues.”

“I think I do. You need a lot of imagination for this,” he sighs like he’s admitting something, and she nudges his chin.

“You don’t. You just need to believe a little. The stars can be whatever you think they are.”

“I . . . I don’t think I’m very good at seeing those small patterns. Some of them blur together. My eyesight is fine but it isn’t perfect.”

“Zuko,” she trails off to look into his eyes, “that doesn’t matter. I mean it.”

“But if I can’t see them . . .”

“You have me,” she reaches out and cuts him off. “I’ll tell you about all of them. All the stars.”

“They’re little suns, aren’t they? In the night . . .”

“I don’t know, really. But I like to think about them like that, even if the astronomers can’t decide.”

He chuckles into her hair. “You know, that would mean that I could also rise with the moon. The moon and the stars. Little balls of fire.”

“Oh, no,” she nudges him back and he laughs louder, quickly silenced by her hand on his mouth. They don’t want the others to know they’re out here. “Let me have my half of the sky.”

“I would give you mine if I could,” he says back quietly, and she relaxes into his grasp.

“You don’t need to. I like us, how we complete each other.”

“I like us too.” A pause. “Can you tell me more about the constellations? I want to try to see them.”

“Well,” she points her hand out into the night and he follows, placing his larger palm over her small fingers. “Over there, in the middle of the night . . . yes, right there . . . that’s The Spoon.”

He sounds confused. “There’s a constellation named after a . . . spoon?”

“It looks like a spoon!”

“It looks like a bunch of stars together. Or, wait — it could just be a smaller dragon.”

“What, do you want to rename it? The Baby Dragon?”

“Sure,” he says, and then puts on a mock-up of a ridiculous accent. “I, Fire Lord Zuko, rename the constellation ‘The Spoon’ the ‘Baby Dragon’.”

He says it like they’re supposed to laugh but they fall quiet and then she whispers back. “Is that the first time you’ve —”

“I don’t really like thinking about it, you know. That I’ll have that much responsibility. I’d rather stay here with you and read the stars.”

She frowns. “You can’t avoid your future.”

He shrugs and she feels his chest briefly contract. “Who knows, Katara. We still have a long way to go. Azula hasn’t found us here, but she’s powerful and she might win. Then I might end up meeting Agni sooner than I’d thought. Honestly,” he leans in, “I feel like I’ve been living on borrowed time. Like I was supposed to die when my grandfather told my dad to murder me, or during that Agni Kai, or when I was the Blue Spirit, or . . . just, I’ve gotten a lot of second chances.”

She traces his sharp cheekbones. “You deserve them, Zuko. You are going to be an amazing Fire Lord, you know that? You really do care about everyone.”

“Some part of me thinks that isn’t enough,” he groans, “but that doesn’t matter. Show me more.”

His eyes, gold as they are, look a little stormy, a little otherworldly. A little like fire, like they’re apart to spark and crackle. The one missing eyelashes, narrowed and a shrunken, is a shining center in a sea of red. He catches her staring and one cheek blushes so she kisses it. It’s unfair, liking every part of him. “Your eyes look like stars.”

“I would think gold is more reminiscent of the sun.”

“No,” she smirks, “I  _ believe  _ in what I see, and I can see the stars in your eyes.”

He reaches out to touch the scarred and torched one, the one he’s partly blind in, and winces even though the skin no longer has any feeling. “That’s a grandiose . . . idea to assign to me.”

“No,” she says, “it’s a  _ feeling.” _

“What —”

“It’s that feeling, you know, of looking up at the sky and thinking about how infinite the universe might be, just laying down here and being in awe that something so beautiful exists. And the stars are a part of that. I just look at them and I think of how beautiful they are, how blessed I am to have their light on me.”

“And you feel that way . . . about me?”

She laughs and it’s his turn to shush her. “I think it’s a little funny, that I found you. But I think that I’ll be forever grateful to Tui and La for leading me to you. And your beautiful eyes.”

“Not beautiful,” he says, touching a hand to the scar, and she brings it down and speaks astutely.

“Yes, beautiful. I feel like everything about you is a piece of art.”

“I feel like I’m the one who should be saying these things to you.”

“I think you’ve wooed me enough.”

“Oh, no. You know, Katara,” her head is back on his chest so she can’t see his face at all but she can definitely picture the smirk currently on his lips, “you are so perfect. Every part of you — your body, your eyes, your bending,  _ fits  _ together better than anything. And it’s not just that which makes you quintessentially you, but also your bravery, your kindness, just how deeply you love —”

She’s definitely blushing and she turns away to ensure he doesn’t see. “I don’t . . .”

“If you want to tell me you like my eyes I get to tell you how much I like every part of you. You’re everything, more than the moon and the sun and the stars —”

“ — Now you’re just trying to one-up me —”

“ — you’re the entire sky, every part of it. The clouds you can create to hide, the rain falling down and washing away everyone’s doubts —”

“I didn’t know you were a poet, Zuko. Or this smooth.”

“Come on,” he groans, back to his usual grumpy self. “Let me appreciate you, please?”

“Fine, okay,” she mutters, but he reaches for her stomach and she lets out a shriek as he tickles her, only to wish she could call it back as they both remember that there is a real-world outside of their little bubble.

“You love it,” he says,  _ I love you,  _ she wants to respond, but not right now. “As I was saying. You’re the clouds and the rain, and you’re the brightness and warmth in the sun, and then when night falls you’re the gentleness in the stars, the way they still want to guide all of us home, and of course the dangerous and fierce spirit of the moon. And at the height of the season, when the polar lights show up, you’re the way they shine despite all odds.”

“Oh.” There’s no way to hide the red on her face from him, but she doesn’t feel embarrassed when she lets him see them as she reaches up to encase herself fully in his arms. But he’s not done.

“If my eyes are your stars than your entire being is my universe.”

“Okay, you don’t have to lay it on that thick —”

“I’m serious, Katara,” and those stars are gazing right at her almost reverently. “I want you to know that. I would give my life to save yours.”

“We need to be positive —”

“I know,” he gasps, and this is the endearingly awkward Zuko she knows best, “and I don’t expect or want you to say the same. But I just want you to know that I would. And I will.”

She can’t look at him. She can’t. “I’ll show you the constellations.”

He nods against her head. “What’s that one?” 

He’s pointing to a few stars winking in the night, a little far away from the ones that she knows. “I don’t know, actually. I don’t think those are a part of one.”

“I feel bad for them,” he speaks up. “They’re all alone, living out an existence by themselves. None of the other stars care about them.”

She props herself up on her hand, her hair fanning around his face. “And what would you propose we do to fix that?”

“Believe,” he echoes back at her before a grin crosses his face. “Can we make our own?”

“Our own . . . I don’t see why not.”

She expects him to say something else but he doesn’t, and then he breathes out loudly and nervously. “Could you . . . help . . .”

“Of — of course,” she smiles, and then reaches out his hand to point at each of the little dots on the opposite side of the sky from the rising sun. “There are . . . seven, right there and there and there . . .”

His face looks strange. “Katara?”

“Yes?”

“They’re in a circle, aren’t they?”

“Uh, well,” she tilts her head back up and notices, now, that they do, in fact, look like they’re in a concentric ring. “Yes, I suppose. Any ideas?”

“No, I . . . they’re not alone.”

“I don’t . . . oh, Zuko,” his face looks stretched and confused, like he’s trying to comprehend something, and she can’t quite reconcile this boy, the one who looks a little lost, with the one who had firmly said that he’d die for her. “You’re not alone.”

His features smoothen and he reaches for her hand. “Not anymore.”

Purple is sitting on the horizon and she doesn’t want to acknowledge that because that means that the day is beginning, that Zuko will start putting Aang through his forms, that she’ll have to start cooking, that Sokka and Suki will wake themselves up and spar. It’s too real, too far away from this moment, the two of them trapped underneath the stars and saying that they love each other in their own kind of way. She swears that she could see him better in the dark as she runs her hand over his eyes again, as he closes them, as she kisses the lids. And then he moves himself back up and presses her to him like he doesn’t want to let her go.

“We’re going to look at these stars again, and you’re going to tell me about every constellation in the sky.”

“I am?”

“After we win.”

She puts her head on his shoulder and tells herself she won’t cry. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I used Katara's star chart from the Si Wong Desert to reference the constellations - although of course none of this is canon - and used a lot of liberties with space discussion. It really isn't addressed in Avatar-world so I just went with what I thought fit.


End file.
